The Kalum Federation
The Kalum Federation are a starfaring hegemony that controls a sizable section of space near the borders of the Imperial Remnant. They vanished from the Galactic scene some three hundred years ago, and returned to join the New Republic three years ago. They field many innovative and odd technologies, and military readiness is a large part of their multi-species culture. Capitol: Kalum, Kalum System The capital of the Kalum Federation, Kalum is not a world-spanning city like Courscant, though it has absolutely leviathian population centers, spanning entire geological zones. The planet has one large moon, Mathi, from which three large chunks, each the size of the first Death Star, have been ripped and moved into a closer orbit of the planet; these serve as gargantuan space stations and mining zones. The planet, it's orbiting stations (both island-sized and smaller), and it's moon are the beating heart of a compact, dense government, and it quite readily displays the Kalu people in microcosm, from it's beautiful cities to it's defensive installations' bare metal and pipes, espousing the military aesthetic of minimalist industrial design which reigned supreme for most of the last three centuries. Military The most heavily-defended world in a heavily-defended society, Kalum has an extensive surface-based defense grid of surface-to-space turbolasers and long-range anti-capital missile silos, bolstered by many squadron hangars all over the planet. The three space stations (named Aegis, Escutcheon and Rampart respectively) compliment this defensive grid with additional turbolaser defenses augmented with a comprehensive point-defense system adapted from the Kalum Mining Corporation's commercial anti-asteroid mass drivers (collectively an 'ADS System,') hangars of their own, and concussion torpedo launchers. The moon Mathi is home to the Kalum Defense Fleet's main space-docks, located inside the large craters left by the planet-cracks that ripped free the island-sized chunks of rock, and the airless, low-gravity rock is likewise home to it's own share of surface-to-space turbolasers, hangars, and anti-cap missile launchers. These defenses are typical in consistancy of those employed to protect any Kalum world or space habitat, though they are naturally more thickly applied to the homeworld than elsewhere. This is typical of the Kalu mindset for the past three hundred years - a sizable portion of their economy goes towards maintaining and updating a large fleet and defensive posture, all the while they prayed never to have to use it, prayers which were answered, seemingly. Kalum military design has been, up until the last twenty years or so (after the general fall of the Empire,) based on as little nonsense as possible. While their designs, even the older ones, seem whimsical to outsiders from a distance, up close one can see the exposed conduits. Inside, their ships, both military and commercial, reserve their luxuries - if any - to solely the crew habitation areas, outside of which one is walking past exposed conduits and pipes. Their thought was that if putting a panel in a given location served no purpose other than to smooth out the looks, then that panel's metal would be better used towards making another pipe. After the fall of the Empire, Kalu civilian and military design underwent a collective sigh of relief, visible in newer designs. The Kalum Defense Fleet's current space supremacy starfighter, the whimsically-named K5 Ascendency, is the most visible example of this: a starfighter phased in over the last ten years, it has a main chassis not unlike that of a an Incom T-65 X-Wing, with two long, horizontal wings, each with two off-vertical pylons upon which traverse massive engine and maneouver pods. Society The Kalum Federation was colonized by Humans sometime around 3,500 ABY; they found the native race, the Kalu'a, already in possession of advanced spaceflight and making their first attempts at faster-than-light travel. The Kalu'a refused to become a client race on their own homeworld, and to their immense relief, the Republic Senate agreed, requiring the human companies attempting to settle the world to defer to the Kalu'a in all their dealings. In such a position, most races quickly became domineering in their dealings towards other races, leaving most offworld companies to pull up stakes, and the Kalu'a wasted no time in driving off the corporations; then they took the unusual step of inviting immigration from offworld. Three and a half thousand years later, the Kalum Federaiton is a truely egalitarian society compromised of several races which have been quite common in the spacelanes: Humans make up the largest of their population and have the largest slice of governmental representation, but they certainly don't have the numerical might to throw around and make the other Kalum species kowtow. During the time when the Kalum Federation existed as part of the Galactic Republic, they had a policy of allowing emigration to their homeworld and the few worlds around it whereupon they were beginning to settle by humans, near-humans, and close-humanoid races, and made a point of leaving their doors open to populations displaced by disaster or warfare. Other spacelane races ended up on their worlds in more ad-hoc fashion by moving in without any coordinated emigration effort in sufficient quantities for reproductive viability, and failing to leave. The Federation's population consists primarily of Humans, Kalu'a and Twi'leks, with various other species sustaining small populations of single-digit percentages. The breakdown is as follows: *Humans: 35% (SWSE Pg. 23) *Kalu'a: 25% (Custom Races) *Twi'lek: 15% (SWSE Pg. 31) *Other Races: 25% **Assorted Near-Human Races: 5% **Bothan: 5% (SWSE Pg. 23) **Duros: 5% (SWSE Pg. 25) **Cathar: 3% (KotOR Campaign Guide Pg. 12) **Aqualish: 2% (SWSE Pg. 284) **Farghul: 2% (Saga-Edition.com and Farghul entry on Wookiepedia **Miraluka: 2% (KotOR CG Pg. 16) **Other Races: <1% Kalum Federation Characters Characters from the Kalum Federation who are not Kalu'a are entirely possible. This choice may be cosmetic, but it may also, at the player's option, have a slight impact: In exchange for losing a known species trait, their characters may adopt the Kalu'a Native Technology trait instead. All characters from the Kalum Federation consider Basic to be their default language, no matter what their native language is or should be - races which learn 'and Basic' as a default still learn their native language, but races which otherwise learn only their normal racial language have lost it as a living language over the generations, being absorbed completely into the Kalum Federation's culture *Aqualish may choose to sacrifice their Expert Swimmer trait for Native Technology. *Bothans may choose to sacrifice their Conditional Bonus Feat for Native Technology. *Cathar may choose to sacrifice their Reactive Claw ability for Native Technology. *Duros may choose to take Native Technology as their First-Level Feat. *Farghul may choose to take Native Technology as their First-Level Feat. *Humans may choose to sacrifice either their free skill training or free feat to gain Native Technology. *Miraluka may choose to take Native Technology as their First-Level Feat. *Twi'leks may choose to sacrifice their Deceptive trait for Native Technology. **Any race may choose to retain their normal racial traits and acquire Native Technology by taking Native Technology as their first-level feat as an alternative; for some races, this is the only way they may acquire the trait. Technology The Kalum Federation in large part relies upon much of the same technologies, or at least analgous technologies, to those used in the rest of the galaxy. Most of their research over the last three hundred years has been devoted to martial defense, but as they slipped away from the Republic during it's heyday, they retained in large part the technological prowess of the Old Republic. An outsider on their worlds will not find himself innundated by primitive technology he does not understand; he will certainly experience novel and local innovations upon normal technologies, but a datapad is a datapad is a datapad, wherever one goes. Gravitics The Kalu are very advanced in the field of gravitics, actively pursuing control of gravity itself in the hopes of producing unified gravitational fields, as opposed to the deflector screens of today, and gravitic weapons which may ignore deflector screens and armor, rending vessels asunder. These ideals are still but theoretical, however, research into them has provided the Kalu'a with a number of unique technologies, none so dramatic as the Planet Crack. The Planet Crack The Planet Crack is an astounding proceedure the Kalu employ to great effect. It is quite literally ripping an island-sized chunk out of a moon or even a full-scale, terrestrial world which has been prepared over the course of several years by a settlement established for the purpose, typically taking three to five years. Once the preperation work has been completed, a long and heroic effort involving sinking hundreds of shafts hundreds of kilometers deep, securing massive gravitational anchors to the mass to be hefted, behemoth mining vessels, fully as large as an Executor class Super Star Destroyer, hunker low over the planet and engage their matching gravity tethers and gravitational centrifuge. This acts to reduce the effective mass of the affected section of rock to an amazing degree, allowing it to be literally rent from the world and lofted into the sky. Once free of the world, these gargantuan, island-sized pieces of rock can either be broken down selectively and harvested over a number of years, or even moved into position elsewhere; the Kalu make good trade in using cracked planet's remnants as the foundation for a massive space station, fully as large as the first Death Star; these miniature, sentient-made moons of rock are highly active hubs, being actively mined at the same time as they house industry, commerce, popuation masses and defenses. Antirepulsor fields As a result of their gravitic manipulation ability, the Kalu are capable of generating anti-repulsorfields. Repulsorlifts work by pushing against gravity wells; by effectively removing the gravity well they push against, a repulsorlift becomes dead-weight. All Kalum Federation military installations and starports are protected by this sort of field, to deny entry to unauthorized vehicles. However, this plays merry hell on outsiders' vessels, which are all built around the presumption of repulsorlifts functioning as they ought to. The Kalu method of recieving landing starships is to use tractor or electromagnetic catchers to guide incoming vessels into their berths, and Kalu vessels and aircraft are most often manufactured with non-repulsor primary drive thrust arrays that allow them to maneouver carefully even without repulsorlifts. The Beam Cannon Properly called the 'Ion Beam Cannon,' though the 'Ion' is generally dropped so as to avoid confusion with the disabling weapons based on electromagnetic, ionizing discharges, the Ion Beam Cannon is anything but a disabling weapon. These massive cannons are literally something an entire frigate the size of a CRC-90 corvette would be wrapped around, and they are devastating, capable of boring holes straight through massive asteroids, and ripping holes in shields and starships. However, they have their drawbacks: on vessels which use a beam cannon spinally-mounted, the entire vessel must align to fire at it's target: this makes targeting vessels of similar size difficult, and targetting smaller, maneouverable vessels virtually impossible. However, these large, continious-beam weapons can put truely devastating amounts of hurt upon larger vessels, far out of proportion to the size of vessel which may carry them. The Ion Beam Cannon was originally implemented in the hopes of being an effective weapon against the Imperial Star Destroyer, and it may well be. *In addition to all other penalties applicable, the Ion Beam Cannon suffers an additional -5 accuracy penalty for every size category smaller than Colossal (Frigate) the target is. However, the Ion Beam Cannon benefit from an additional +5 accuracy bonus for every size category larger than Colossal (Frigate) the target is. *Ion Beam Cannons can only be mounted on Colossal (Frigate) sized vessels and larger. A Colossal (Frigate) sized vessel may have no more than one Ion Beam Cannon, which must be spinally-mounted. **A spinally-mounted weapon is a Pilot-controlled weapon. Firing a spinally-mounted weapon requires a full-round action on the part of the pilot and any gunners assigned to the weapon: the attack roll may be made by someone other than the pilot, but the pilot must still devote his full round's action to firing it. Category:Knights of the New Republic